Repartioning NTFS File System

[Brad De Vries]

On 5/16/05, Collins Richey <crichey at gmail.com> wrote:
> mtfsresize or qtparted are fine, just be sure you have a restorable
> backup of the Windows stuff before you start. Whatever the tool,
> here's what you do effectiviely:
> 
> 1. Determine how much shrinkage the partition will bear. WinXP usually
> plops an unmovable swap file right in the middle of the partition, so
> you only get about half the original space freed. Sometimes you can
> remove the WinXP swap partition (put it back later), but I haven't had
> good results with this.
> 
> 2. Shrink the partition. This marks the ntfs partition as needing fsck
> (or whatever the Windows term is) next time you boot WinXP, so don't
> be surprised if the boot is slow.
> 
> 3. Remove the ntfs partition and add it back with the new size. Be
> sure you get the numbers right!!!!!!
> 
> 4. Now you can add new partitions for Linux. Since you are dual
> booting, I recommend adding a small FAT32 partition that can be
> written either from WinXP or Linux. Linux doesn't really have usable
> write support for ntfs.
> 
> Enjoy,
> 
> --
>  Collins
>        When I saw the Iraqi people voting three weeks ago, 8 million of them,
>        it was the start of a new Arab world.... The Berlin Wall has fallen.
>                - Lebanese Druze leader Walid Jumblatt

Thanks everyone for your comments and recommendations.  It turns out
that that both ntfsresize and parted (and qtparted) report the same
problem, that the drive has bad blocks possibly from manufacturing or
that it's dying.  The end result is that neither tool will allow the
NTFS partition to be resized.

I guess I wipe the drive and install Linux and play until it dies.

Thanks again.

Brad.